By: Samie

Travel Dates: July 18th-22nd, 2024

Day 5

(Tim Hortons, Drive Home, A&W, Wrap Up)

This post is going to be pretty short and sweet as the final day of our Winnipeg journey was a pretty uneventful wind down.

I will start by jumping back to the evening before. We had just gotten back to the Airbnb from an extremely full afternoon walking around the Assiniboine Zoo and eventful evening enjoying Nate Bargatze and fellow comedians at the Great Outdoor Comedy Festival. Despite being pleasantly tired, we still wanted to exhaust every moment of our remaining evening in this Canadian city.

Our evening activity of choice had somehow ended up being watching late-night Dateline episodes all together on the upstairs couches. After practically jumping into the comfiest clothes we could find, we all settled in for our simple little family night tradition and contentedly enjoyed each other’s quiet company until each of us hit the point after dark where we knew it was time to move into our own rooms or spaces to officially close out the day.

While for the others this meant prepping for sleep, Luke and I weren’t quite ready to call it a night just yet. Since we had been designated to occupy the basement space of the Airbnb, we had our own small sitting area with a couch and tv. We grabbed some drinks and snacks and cozied up to watch some YouTube, which is a tradition we hold together in our own household at home, so there was something uncomplicated and cozy about carrying that tradition into our travel into a foreign country.

During one of the previous evenings, Luke, Annie, and I had driven to a local liquor store to gather some items to add a pleasant hum and buzz to our refreshingly calm and quiet nights together. As mentioned in other posts before, I am a large fan of peach and mango flavors. The store had a fun assortment of peach flavored beverages and seltzers, so I had picked out a few that looked the most aesthetically pleasing to sample. I cracked open my last can and grabbed the extra pecan squares I had nabbed during our trip back to The Forks Market earlier that day. Luke and I got to end our final day in our fourth country together in each other’s warm and pleasant company, enjoying our snack and drinks before, we too, were ready to call it on the day.

The following morning, we had agreed to pack up and hit the road at a reasonable hour to make the roadtrip adventure back to Fargo and then back home. However, we had one last extremely Canadian stop to make for breakfast. We weren’t about to leave without stopping at the infamous Tim Hortons. Just after 9:00, with hands full of hot coffee and pasties or breakfast sandwiches, we hit the road and prepared to depart The Keystone Province and Gateway of the West.

It was a quick and easy hour and a half drive to the border where we prepared to once again cross through. It was a much faster drive-through, and we were fortunately able to recenter the country easily and without any hiccups or complications. From there, it was another two and a half hours to Annie’s house where we all unpacked our suitcases and souvenirs and whatnot from the van and prepared to divide and move forward with the conclusion to our own journeys.

Luke and I were ready to make our way back home right away. We were missing the tranquility and comfort of being in our own home and sleeping in our own bed. Plus, some very generous friends of ours had selflessly agreed to come out twice a day to let our dogs out and feed them while we were away. Normally, Luke’s parents are our pet sitters, but with them coming with us for this trip, we had to look elsewhere and were beyond thankful we had people we could trust and depend on to watch over our pups. This meant we also wanted to get home to relieve them of all the hard work they had already done to help us, and we were of course really excited to see all our pets again.

It was another three hour drive to get home. Jump back in time with me once again for a moment. We had stopped at an A&W in Winnipeg with very specific intentions. Luke had really wanted the classic root beer float, and I had really been craving some hot and crunchy cheese curds. To our absolute dismay, the A&W in Winnipeg had neither of these items on their menu. We couldn’t believe it and had to deal with having our hopes dashes. That was until we were once again back in the United States and well on our way home. The route to return to our abode takes us through Webster, where this is yet another A&W. Once we arrived, we were once again on our mission, only this time we were hugely successful. Despite just saying goodbye to our family, we were quick to send them pictures of our acquired treasure and allow them to enjoy in our mission success and completion!

Upon arriving back home, we got to revel in the company of our pets, who seemed to miss us as well, and also each other’s company within the boundaries of our own home. It doesn’t seem like it would be different, but it is!

After some proper relaxation, I got to fish out my glass treasures from our souvenir stash so that I could find proper homes to enjoy them. Just as a refresher, I had found a beautiful blue glass-blown handbag at the market in the alleyways our first night in Winnipeg, a cat bottle of perfume from my first visit to the antique mall at The Forks, and a stunningly unique purple and white glass vase found on my second pass through the antique mall.

Finally, despite celebrating an early anniversary in Nashville and it being our actual anniversary date at the beginning of our Winnipeg journey, we still have an annual tradition where we take a picture of us holding our paint canvas from our wedding with a wedding picture pasted into the middle in front of our wedding arch that we got married in front of. After an extremely eventful and wonderful couple of weeks, we were finally able to fulfill our tradition and bring our summer of travel to a close.

While we have become avid travelers, we always gain something new to take with us every time we go on a journey. Some of the takeaways from our Winnipeg adventure would be that time with family is always well spent, the quiet moments with the people you love can be just as fulfilling as the big and eventful ones, and Canadian A&Ws still have a lot to learn. We can’t wait to see what our next adventure brings!